Art & Creativity Quote by Edward Dmytryk

Obviousness is the dead air of art: it tells the audience what to feel before theyve had the pleasure of feeling it. Edward Dmytryk, a Hollywood director who lived through the factory logic of the studio system and the paranoia of the blacklist era, is drawing a hard line against the kind of filmmaking that behaves like a lecture. When he calls the obvious a "sin", he borrows moral language to shame a very practical vice: pandering. The obvious is safe, legible, and marketable, but it also flattens character into types and story into message.

The intent isnt to celebrate obscurity for its own sake. Dmytryk is arguing for implication, for the power of withholding. Cinema, at its best, works through the audience: a cut that lands half a beat late, a gesture that contradicts dialogue, a scene that refuses to underline its own theme. These choices make viewers co-authors, not consumers being spoon-fed.

The subtext is also professional. Directors spend their lives fighting the "notes" that demand clarity at any cost: explain the motive, restate the stakes, add the line that makes it undeniable. Dmytryk insists that the price of that clarity is mystery, tension, and trust. Calling it a sin is a provocation to artists to risk misunderstanding, because the alternative is worse: being perfectly understood and instantly forgotten.