MOVIES OF THE ‘80s : DIRECTING : LACK OF VISION

Movies may not be any worse than they were 10 years ago--it just seems that way. Part of this may have to do with where directors come from these days: not as much from theater, nor from the Corman-level low-budget ranks. More and more they come from commercials and MTV, training that gives them high technical command but few strong ideas about sustained screen storytelling.

Directors today tend to deal with actors in tiny increments, often because they’re working with young, untrained talent. And, as a result we rarely get the full, richly rounded characters of days gone by. In addition, both the influence of TV and a frequent lack of theatrical training may be making the old, smoothly functioning acting ensembles of the Hollywood Golden Age a thing of the past. At the same time, the new movies’ insistent visual virtuosity, often untied to any dramatic or literary depth, can seem disturbingly shallow. Directors today frequently copy directors of the past, particularly John Ford, Frank Capra or Alfred Hitchcock, but they haven’t really learned from them.

So it’s not surprising that in the mid-’80s the standard for direction has been set by a pair of septuagenarians, John Huston and Akira Kurosawa. “Prizzi’s Honor” and “Ran” are two very different films, but both express their makers’ vision with a bravura both personal and accessible.

On other fronts, the overwhelming success of the “Rambos,” “Cobras” and “Commandos” may have made it harder for modest and intelligent films to get made. But there is no reason to despair for directors--or the American cinema--when young film makers like Bill Sherwood (“Parting Glances”), Joyce Chopra (“Smooth Talk”), Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) and especially Jim Jarmusch (“Stranger Than Paradise”) can come up with fresh, brisk audacious and authoritative films--and win small, but appreciative, audiences.

What’s more, Woody Allen has reached a new career high with a string of glittering successes, beginning with those whimsical comedies “Broadway Danny Rose” and “The Purple Rose of Cairo” and culminating in “Hannah and Her Sisters,” an acute chronicling of life in present-day Manhattan that’s incisive, funny and compassionate and irresistibly graceful and romantic. Paul Mazursky has had lots of fun with West Coast mores in “Down and Out in Beverly Hills,” while Martin Scorsese (“After Hours”) and Susan Seidelman (“Desperately Seeking Susan,”) staked out the comic territory in Lower Manhattan. Let’s not forget those other very personal West Coast directors, John Cassavetes (“Love Streams”), Henry Jaglom (“Always”) and Alan Rudolph (“Choose Me” and “Songwriter”)--particularly Rudolph, with his special gift for high-style, super-cool comic nonchalance.

Seidelman is just one of a number of young directors who offer encouraging exceptions to the seemingly endless cycle of dumb, bloody vigilante violence. Albert Brooks found endless satirical possibilities for his modern-day Candide in “Lost in America” and Rob Reiner followed his rockumentary put-on “This Is Spinal Tap” with one of the best “youth” comedies, “The Sure Thing.” John Hughes has a special empathy for teen-agers--perhaps most effective in “The Breakfast Club”--though his grim view of anyone much beyond 20 grows tiresome.

To think of all these directors and their films is to realize how academic, if admirable and even enjoyable, such films as David Lean’s “A Passage to India,” Sydney Pollack’s “Out of Africa” or Milos Forman’s “Amadeus” are in comparison. It’s the director with a highly contemporary, amusingly absurdist vision of life who is making the deepest, most disturbing (in the best sense) connections with audiences--like Terry Gilliam of “Brazil.”

The British cinema is undergoing a renewal, which has brought to the fore such exciting directors as Neil Jordan (“Mona Lisa”) and Stephen Frears (“My Beautiful Laundrette”) capturing a sense of life in Mrs. Thatcher’s England with grit and humor.

Although far too many mainstream movies seem sour, incoherent and thickheaded, the best American directors can still stand with the best directors anywhere.