"I mean, certainly it's the single biggest event, I think, in terms of popular entertainment, or art even, if you say that, of the 20th Century. It's been film. It's the 20th Century's real art form"
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Pollack is doing something sly here: he’s elevating Hollywood without pretending it’s above the marketplace that built it. Calling film “the single biggest event” of the 20th century folds box office, mass ritual, and aesthetic achievement into one claim. It’s not the museum’s argument for cinema; it’s the director-producer’s argument that the crowd is part of the medium’s genius, not an embarrassment to be apologized for.
The hedges matter. “I mean, certainly,” “I think,” “or art even, if you say that” are classic insider qualifiers: he knows the word “art” is still contested territory for movies, especially coming from an industry that sells tickets and trades in celebrity. Pollack’s little shrug at the term functions like a challenge. Go ahead, debate the label if you want; the century already voted with its attention. Film won by becoming the dominant way modern life saw itself.
The subtext is historical and slightly defensive. The 20th century’s signature experiences were industrial, urban, mediated, fast: war footage, newsreels, television, advertising, propaganda, fantasies scaled to the size of nations. Painting and the novel remained vital, but neither could match cinema’s ability to fuse technology, narrative, music, performance, and spectacle into a shared, repeatable dream. Coming from Pollack - a craftsman of star-driven, prestige filmmaking - the line also reads as a credo: movies aren’t just diversion; they’re the era’s central cultural language, and the people making them deserve to be taken as seriously as the people writing books.
The hedges matter. “I mean, certainly,” “I think,” “or art even, if you say that” are classic insider qualifiers: he knows the word “art” is still contested territory for movies, especially coming from an industry that sells tickets and trades in celebrity. Pollack’s little shrug at the term functions like a challenge. Go ahead, debate the label if you want; the century already voted with its attention. Film won by becoming the dominant way modern life saw itself.
The subtext is historical and slightly defensive. The 20th century’s signature experiences were industrial, urban, mediated, fast: war footage, newsreels, television, advertising, propaganda, fantasies scaled to the size of nations. Painting and the novel remained vital, but neither could match cinema’s ability to fuse technology, narrative, music, performance, and spectacle into a shared, repeatable dream. Coming from Pollack - a craftsman of star-driven, prestige filmmaking - the line also reads as a credo: movies aren’t just diversion; they’re the era’s central cultural language, and the people making them deserve to be taken as seriously as the people writing books.
Quote Details
| Topic | Movie |
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