Lost Art of Filmmaking represents my attempt to highlight examples of film language that no longer seems to appear on the radar of a majority of working filmmakers.

Each column, I’ll choose a clip from a movie that demonstrates a ‘lost art’ of some sort, ask you to watch it, and then go into detail about why this particular slice of movie is worth bringing back into focus…

Waaay back, I wrote a little blog called The Perfect Channelsurfing Cocktail. Give it a looksee.

Because of that tendency I have to channelsurf… I’ve recently been re-introduced to BASIC INSTINCT, and cannot stop watching it.   Purely for research purposes.

BASIC INSTINCT

Ok, so I’ve now watched it maybe fifteen times in the last month (same as SHOWGIRLS – the cable programmer’s got a hard-on for Verhoeven lately – but SHOWGIRLS is an entirely other beast of a blog for another time).  What should I watch instead?  FOOL’S GOLD?

It’s over-the-top, hammy, seedy, and indulgent. It’s also a terrific, bloated film noir that knows its’ full of itself and still swings for the fences.

Jan De Bont seduces us with gorgeous cinematography (I was surprised as hell to learn one of his first films was CUJO). Jerry Goldsmith creates another masterpiece – his brilliant, seductive and serpentile score is revelatory.

I’ve already written about my love for Michael Douglas, and Sharon Stone never made a better career move than to sleep with Verhoeven for the part (as Joe Esterhas claimed in his book).

Elevating this film from becoming just another seedy, exploitive film noir (although some gay rights groups famously campaigned against it prior to its’ release for stereotyping gays as disturbed individuals – I’m speaking not of content, but of craftsmanship) is largely due to Verhoeven’s direction and understanding of pacing, blocking, and camerawork.

Go back and look at the two interrogation scenes where Catherine Tramell (Stone) is first questioned, then the one where Nick Curran (Douglas) is put in the hot seat. A triumph of composition, camerwork, and editing.

Like his films or not, like his subject matter or not, Verhoeven really knows how to move the camera around for maximum effect, how to energize a scene and keep the momentum moving. The camerawork has purpose.

Here’s a simple scene of Douglas and a pre-Mormon Jeanne Tripplehorn walking down a staircase. They’re coming off of a scene where she’s just helped provide him with an alibi for the murder of a cop from internal affairs who’s been harassing him:

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A revolving 360 degree shot that followed the actors down vertically three flights of stairs. What a headache to light and setup and stage… and if I remember it right, the staircase was constructed on set solely for that shot. If I’ve remembered it wrong, someone please correct me… but still… an elegant shot you may have missed the first five times…

Another example: this brief one-minute fluid master shot at a crime scene. Curran (Douglas) was almost run down in a parking lot, and after a speedy car chase through San Francisco, his attacker was killed after driving off a bridge. But is Curran holding something back?

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A couple things I like. I like the guy rappelling down in the background ‘with the information’ and then having to get to his mark. Once the captain learns Curran isn’t telling them everything, Verhoeven punches up the intensity by pushing in from a wide shot into a close two-shot. I like the weasly internal affairs guy trying to get a word in edgewise. I like all the background action. And I like the last shot of Curran watching the body being lifted out of the riverbed.

After a suspenseful car chase, it would’ve been an abrupt stop to go to a simple talking scene back at the police station so a quick little fluid master keeps the energy going and lets us catch our breath without slamming the brakes (so to speak).

One last thought about Verhoeven:

Paul Verhoven used to claim that due to the violence he’d experienced growing up in Nazi Germany. That he’d been de-sensitized to violence, and therefore the violence in his films were funny to him. I can only imagine what kind of sex he’d experienced in his childhood…

Verhoven’s best films work on a metaphorical and satirical level (STARSHIP TROOPERS, ROBOCOP). So… as many Europeans seem to already think… what if Verhoeven thinks that Americans live a life of excess? Wouldn’t that influence his approach towards making Hollywood films? Excessive films for an audience who indulge in excess everyday? Sort of a satirical inside macro-joke on American films and their audience?

Just a thought.

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