IGNATIY VISHNEVETSKY:
Before we say our final, long overdue goodbye to the Oscars, Jeff Greenfield wants to say hello to something that’s been missing in movies. Here’s Jeff.
JEFF GREENFIELD:
No mater how you feel about the Oscar results, you have to be heartened by nomination for 3 motion pictures for the same specific reason. “The King’s Speech,” “The Social Network”, and “True Grit” all are films whose scripts celebrate and honor the use of a vibrant, English language.
CLIP
JEFF:
There are the rapid-fire exchanges of techno-geeks…
CLIP
JEFF:
.. the elegant duets between royalty and commoner…
CLIP
JEFF:
The odd yet oddly appropriate courtly formality of a gunfighter and a young girl…
CLIP
JEFF:
For me, these films harken back to a time when rich, pungent language was a critical element of the movies—especially the comedies.
CLIP
JEFF:
There were wise guys—and wise gals—swapping barbs and insults in films like “His Girl Friday”
CLIP
JEFF:
There was Groucho’s machine-gun word play:
CLIP
JEFF:
There were the acerbic barbs of writer-director Preston Sturges—here, in Sulllivan’s travels, the director and a movie executive talk of a box-office bomb.
CLIP
JEFF:
Now, this kind of dialogue really doesn’t necessarily travel that well—to countries where English,so to speak is not the lingua franca. No, in the ever increasingly international market, what really works are movies with stuff like this.
CLIP
JEFF:
…movies where nothing needs to be translated. A recent trailer for “the Mechanic” is a perfect illustration:
CLIP
JEFF:
The only criticism that applies to this kind of movie comes right out of Second City TV:
CLIP
JEFF:
I don’t know if the trio of films constitutes a trend, but I hope so. And we have it on very good authority where language is really important. Doesn’t the Good Book say “in the beginning was the word”? It does. Word up.